Martha Jungwirth: 1000 Words Martha Jungwirth talks about her painting process

FOR OVER SIXTY YEARS, Martha Jungwirth has fashioned a distinctive painterly language that she once described as the liberatory opposite of “rigid, binding reality.” Born in 1940 in Vienna, where she still lives, she was the only woman member of Wirklichkeiten (Realities), a loose association of artists who took their name after an eponymous 1968 exhibition at the Vienna Secession curated by art historian, journalist, and museum director Otto Breicha. By the time works from her large-format, experimental “Indesit” series, ca. 1974–76. were being shown at Documenta 6 in 1977, her works had begun to recall big-city infrastructures, bodily systems, and even iterative computer diagrams. Since then, the body—more precisely, kinesis—has been the roving core of Jungwirth’s practice: “Painting starts from a concurrence of outward movement, bodily movement, and inward movement,” she wrote.

Jungwirth’s new paintings are being shown at Venice’s Galleria di Palazzo Cini through September 29. The exhibition, occupying the second floor of a palace overlooking the Canal Grande in the sestiere of Dorsoduro, comprises fifteen abstractions: a mix of oils on brown paper mounted on canvas, and oils on cardboard. The show’s setting is hardly neutral. The museum’s lower floor contains the home and some of the historic art collection of industrialist and arts patron Vittorio Cini (1885–1977), a promoter of Benito Mussolini who briefly served as the Fascist dictator’s minister of communications during the Second World War before resigning in 1943. In this light, the title of the show, “Herz der Finsternis” (Heart of Darkness), seems aptly ambiguous. I met Jungwirth at her exhibition, and we spoke by phone a week later from her studio in Vienna, as she was preparing for the June opening of her retrospective at the Guggenheim Bilbao.

— By Kito Nedo

PAINTING, FOR ME, IS ABOUT TENSION. I often work from my recollection of a motif. It takes time to arrive at an interesting tension and the right constellation of fields. Sometimes it’s spontaneous, other times I need to rework it. It’s all about the motif and process.

Paper is a sensual material. Smooth or rough, its tactile quality often resembles skin. I began with watercolors, and I’ve only ever painted on paper, which is still my preferred ground. I try things out to determine which paper is best suited to what I am trying to achieve: packing paper, handmade paper, paper that’s been used or written on. I like a very fine handmade paper from India that’s available in large formats. I’ve also painted on pages from old account books. They’re coated in some sort of glue laminate, so the paint dries extremely slowly. As a result, the color lies perfectly still, with all the nuances and little watercolor edges that I want.

It’s hard to describe how a picture comes into being. Before I start, I apply a very thin layer of primer. Without this, the paint would bleed out, and the picture would look like a drowned piece of blotting paper. The mark must stand for itself, sit on the surface, and form an edge. That’s important, since the blotches operate relative to and against one another.

This process can be spontaneous or controlled, fluid or halting. Chance is important. When I get stuck, I look at the first blotch, and everything develops from there. Then there’s another mark; I grow more hesitant. I have to bring it back under control. Sometimes the blotches accumulate, as though in a cascade. On a good day, it’s just one after another. Other times, I’ll stand in front of the work and try to place the next intelligent mark. Back in the day, I would crawl around on the floor to paint my watercolors, but I can’t do that anymore. Now I work on the wall and at the table. I have a hard time bending down.

I’ve always hated how people sneer at watercolors. A widely held view was that it’s something for amateurs. Thank God I saw examples by J. M. W. Turner early on that showed me how amazing a watercolor can be. The medium was my point of departure and stimulus: What could I do with it? Someone needed to bring watercolor out of its corner.

Watercolor is still my main mode. But working in oil, too, is a pleasure. I sometimes use highly diluted oils. I also love the consistency of thick oil paints—gorgeous, juicy stuff you can just daub on. That contrast is also a sensory stimulus that I cherish. It’s wonderful when the studio smells of turpentine. On some level I do see myself as working in the classical tradition of painting in these media, even if, unlike the old masters, I “only” paint on paper. Acrylic, by contrast, is so vulgar. You can’t even paint park benches with it.

Sometimes things stall. You work and nothing happens. You realize how you’re blocked, the movement, the idea. I try to undercut this barren state by working on smaller things, where I can be more spontaneous. It’s a kind of interrelationship. When I’m preoccupied with a theme or I’m interested in certain constellations of colors, I don’t want to have any gaps. That’s why I sometimes switch formats. The smaller formats function like handholds that keep the process moving without interruption.

There are frugal artists who make do with five cans of paint. That’s not my way. The nuance of color is all I’m about. I love having lots of tubes in the studio. The whole place is crammed. I love this profusion, where there’s stuff I can grab everywhere. And I love an abundance of colors, nuances. “Gefühlsfarben,” or “feeling-colors,” for me, are hues from the red, pink, and purple range. It’s like with a child that always reaches for something he’s especially fond of. Though I also discipline myself and work in other colors so things don’t get monotonous.

Choice of brush is important, obviously. For watercolors, I use sable-hair. The elastic bristles retain paint and water especially well, letting you work fluidly without the brush drying up. A cheap brush quickly turns hard like a hog’s bristle. With oil, it doesn’t really matter, though. I buy these nondescript ready-made paintbrushes, wide ones for quick movements. I also don’t rinse them out anymore, it’s too strenuous. So I throw them out and buy new ones. It doesn’t make a difference.

I’m very interested in other artists, and I often see exhibitions and travel. You’re a different person away from home. I first went to New York in the mid-1970s. The whole city, the atmosphere, everything was different than in Europe. I wandered through the museums with my husband for hours. The Museum of Modern Art had a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe show at the time, “Five Projects”: drawings of skyscraper designs. Back in Vienna, I thought, “I have to do something with the skyscrapers, the drawings, that impression.” I opened my dishwasher, knelt down on the floor in front of it, and started drawing. That’s how I came to make the “Indesit” series of drawings between 1974 and 1976. Three large-format drawings from the series were shown at Documenta 6 in Kassel the following year.

My art is like a diary, seismographic. My state of mind plays a big role. Am I energized, tired, or distraught? That’s all in there. When I’m euphoric, when I’m sad, when I’m angry, that’s when I’m at my best, painting. Now, I’m not as angry as I used to be. I’m older now. The more you know, the more cerebral you get. Not a bad thing, but you have to break it up again. You have to get back into the old cerebrums, break up the old patterns. Well, how do you do that? There’s the rub. You essentially start from scratch every day.